DotOS v.1.2 Review - A Beautiful Custom ROM Standing Out From The Crowd!

Over the last year or so, there has been a drop in the uniqueness exhibited by custom ROMs. It seemed like ROMs started copying each other and shortly, every cool and unique feature one or the other had, was already shared by every other ROM.

One example of this could be the Dirty Unicorns Interface (DUI) package, which as the name suggests was built by Dirty Unicorns (DU) team. The DUI package comprising of Pulse, Smartbar and Fling was introduced to custom ROMs with the Marshmallow based builds of Dirty Unicorns. The DUI was what differentiated DU back in the Marshmallow days. The DUI was loved so much by the community that other ROMs started incorporating that in their builds. Soon the DUI was no longer exclusive to Dirty Unicorns, the uniqueness of the DUI was now shared by several other ROMs. Since ROMs were incorporating each other's features, it made it difficult for the end user to choose between two ROMs because there were quite similar. We saw this trend continue into Nougat based ROMs too. Color Engine and custom PIE controls were introduced by Paranoid Android in their Nougat based builds and these are now present in many other custom ROMs.

After this "heat-death" of development, dotOS appears to be the knight in the shining armor. I won't go knee deep into the features because Krittin has already done that in his rant of a review. So if you wish to know more about the features in dotOS, check out the video below.

We will be keeping this post to what makes dotOS stand out from the others. First let's talk about the design. dotOS have taken a unique approach to their design. In my experience of using the ROM, I keep discovering new design elements every now and then. The most distinct element in design is the quick settings panel. The first thing that you will notice herein is the position of the brightness slider. The brightness slider is present at the bottom of the quick settings panel, just as in Android Oreo. Another change which will be visible on closer inspection is the animation which triggers when the quick settings panel is dragged down. As I said, there are a lot of unique design elements. I have come across several of these unique elements in the package installer and various other animations.

With the v.1.2 iteration of the ROM, dotOS added the customisation of tweaking the accent color in the quick settings panel. dotOS already has Paranoid Android's Color Engine which originally allowed to change the colors of the Settings menu. dotOS have taken Color Engine a step further and made it to theme the quick settings panel.

Another thing which I liked about dotOS is Dot Papers. This consists of a beautiful set of wallpapers carefully picked by the dotOS team. The wallpapers are updated regularly and there is neat categorisation which would allow you to find your favorite wallpapers.

The battery life and performance of the ROM will vary as per your device and the way you use it. The ROM lasted me easily throughout two days on the 4100mAh battery of my Redmi Note 4. The performance was fast and I don't have anything on my complaint list. Again, battery life is a subjective topic and it largely depends on the device you use. So is the case with the performance.

It's quite possible that you are hearing about dotOS for the first time. This is because the project is very new and thus not many devices are supported yet but the ROM will surely come to more and more devices as it gets known by the community.

dotOS is a result of incredible efforts by Ganesh Varma, Iacob Ionut, Mohan CM, Sam Grande , Kuber Sharma and many others.

A Brief Summation Of The Features

Many unique design elements that make it different from most AOSP ROMs.

A refreshing feel that makes it seem as if it was made by an OEM.

Looks somewhat close to OxygenOS and Android Oreo.

Includes many custom apps that you won't find on any other ROM.

It is very fast and light while being...

...very customizable! It even includes custom button and toggle styles.